Best way to learn a new language (German)?

Being a polyglot, I've experimented with many ways of learning languages.

You are really lucky to be at the point of learning your first new language, it is an exciting stage for all of us bi-linguists and beyond. You have a couple ways of going about this and the choice is completely up to you, whatever feels most comfortable.

1. You can go with the approach I used to learn my first acquired language, which was "Teach Yourself"'s "Complete (blank)" in my case Arabic, in your case German.

With the "Complete German" course, (a four-hundred page book with two audio discs) you get a comprehensive and intuitive grammatical layout and around 1,500 words, intermediate level. Along with this I would purchase a dictionary, a grammar, and maybe a German phrasebook. If you want an approach by book to German that is less grammar intensive, I would go with Assimil. It's an approximately 200 page book that takes you through a variety of situations and gives you about the same or less amount of vocabulary (1,000 words). This will also take you to intermediate. Your best bet with this book approach is to use two courses, along with the previously mentioned courses, you might want to also purchase "Colloquial German" and/or "GOGerman", for extra reinforcement.

2. This is one of the most boring but the quickest ways to learn a language, I call it "Going in Bareback". For this method you may purchase a comprehensive grammar explanation of German, a dictionary, and some German kid's books. Next, go on the web and find a list of common German words and phrases, 2,000 - 5,000 is considered operable in said country. Obtain flashcards or the quizlet app on your phone, and every day try to power out 30 new words. Keep on reviewing and adding on new words as you learn the grammar of German and plug in the new words you are learning, * for this method I would highly recommend finding a native speaker to practice with as they can iron out any problems you have with grammar and pronunciation. Keep on exposing yourself to German and soon enough you will be fluent. NOTE: although this is my favorite method it has two problems. One, It is extremely hard to pull off if you don't know what you are doing and can be very problematic if you need extra explanations in an area. Two: it can be very boring. This is the fastest method by far, however.

3. I absolutely love the Pimsleur course. Although it is on the high end of the price range, I can promise you it is by far the best course if you want to sound like a native speaker in the language. By the end of the course you will have built up a fair vocabulary and understand basic grammar concepts of German. You will sound the most fluent with this method, yet you will have the most trouble understanding the grammar, During the courses you hear and participate in conversations, which is great for exposing you to the language. If you are thinking about going ahead with this method I would recommend getting some simple books and expose yourself to German internet domains, since this method is completely audio based and you won't know the spelling that well.

4. Textbooks and others, This is just the run of the mill, tutors, school courses, and other means of learning, you can look into what is available in your area yourself if you choose to go with this method,

Please write me back with any questions you have, I love to see a young soul getting into the passion of my life, and I would love to help in any other ways you need, Hope this helped.

I taught myself German last year and ended up getting a 4 on the AP exam, after only one year of teaching myself. This is how I did it. I started off by just searching things on yahoo and google, things like "Learning German for beginners." And I occasionally went to google translate to see if my sentences made sense. after about 3 months of this, I realized I would need a bit more to really learn German, I couldn't just keep searching things on yahoo and google. So I decided to friend someone from Germany on facebook lol. I don't know if you'll get as lucky as I did, because I just sent her a friend request out of the blue, and not many people accept a random stranger's friend request, but she did. And she's been great about letting me practice on her. Again, I don't know if you'll get as lucky as me, but if you could that would be excellent. Next I got rosetta stone for German. I suppose you could go without it, but you have to find a way to inetract face to face with someone. The neat thing about rosetta stone is they had face to face sessions with fluent speakers. If you could substitute for that, that would be fine too. then I watched shows in German, went on youtube to view German videos, went on to the German section of Yahoo answers etc... That's how I did it, Good luck!

go to the library and find the Pimsler German language cds. burn them onto your computer for free and then load them into your ipod and listen to them in the car

download some fun german pop music and look up the lyrics in english and german to get the accent down

watch some german movies like "Kein Ohr Hasen" or "Zwei Ohr Kuken" they're fun rom coms (aka not about nazis) lol

try to write essays in german and ask a german friend or penpal to correct them